This book illuminates the authoritative voice of Solon of Athens by an integrated literary, historical, and philological approach and the use of a range of hermeneutic frameworks, from literary theory to oral poetics.

This volume offers a range of innovative approaches to Solon of Athens, legendary law-giver, statesman, and poet of the early sixth century B.C. In the first part, Solon’s poetry is reconsidered against the background of oral poetics and other early Greek poetry. The connection between Solon’s alleged roles as poet and as politician is fundamentally questioned. Part two offers a reassessment of Solon’s laws based on a revision of the textual tradition and recent views on early Greek lawgiving. In part three, fresh scrutiny of the archeological and written evidence of archaic Greece results in new perspectives on the agricultural crisis and Solon’s role in the social and political developments of sixth-century Athens. Originally published in hardcover

Excerpt from Solon the Athenian The present work falls into two distinct parts, a biography of Solon and an edition of the fragments of his poems. 'the biographical essay should not be regarded as an introduction to the text of the poems and the commentary upon them. Since our knowledge of Solon's life is not extensive and since the fragments of his poems are few, it is possible to include within one small book two things which in other cases would offer material for two separate books. This is in one sense a happy circumstance, because the reader can have before him in brief space all that can be brought together about Solon. The biographical essay presents the results of a critical study of all the evidence available on the life of Solon. A sceptical attitude has been adopted alike toward ancient legend and modern hypothesis. If the attitude seems oversceptical, this is not much to be regretted it is better in such a business to tell nothing but the truth than to risk falsehood through fear of not telling the whole truth. But whatever has been rejected has received due consideration in footnotes or appendices. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

In The Reception of Greek Lyric Poetry in the Ancient World: Transmission, Canonization and Paratext, a team of international scholars consider the afterlife of early Greek lyric poetry (iambic, elegiac, and melic) up to the 12th century CE, from a variety of intersecting perspectives: reperformance, textualization, the direct and indirect tradition, anthologies, poets’ Lives, and the disquisitions of philosophers and scholars. Particular attention is given to the poets Tyrtaeus, Solon, Theognis, Sappho, Alcaeus, Stesichorus, Pindar, and Timotheus. Consideration is given to their reception in authors such as Aristophanes, Herodotus, Plato, Plutarch, Athenaeus, Aelius Aristides, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, and Statius, as well as their discussion by Peripatetic scholars, the Hellenistic scholia to Pindar, Horace’s commentator Porphyrio, and Eustathius on Pindar.

Addresses the historical, social and political contexts within which Solon of Athens instituted wide-ranging reforms to the Athenian constitution (594-93 BCE), the impact of those reforms on the political self-awareness of the archaic Athenians themselves, and the ethical and political philosophies that drove reform.

This is an up-to-date edition of the Athenian Constitution which was written in the school of Aristotle in the fourth century B.C., by a scholar who has been engaged with this text throughout his working life.

Did the Bible only take its definitive form after Alexander conquered the Near East, after the Hellenisation of the Samaritans and Jews, and after the founding of the great library of Alexandria? The Bible and Hellenism takes up one of the most pressing and controversial questions of Bible Studies today: the influence of classical literature on the writing and formation of the Bible. Bringing together a wide range of international scholars, The Bible and Hellenism explores the striking parallels between biblical and earlier Greek literature and examines the methodological issues raised by such comparative study. The book argues that the oral traditions of historical memory are not the key factor in the creation of biblical narrative. It demonstrates that Greek texts – from such authors as Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus and Plato – must be considered amongst the most important sources for the Bible.